Charlie

Given the rather negative reputation that Palermo has in America as a Mafia haven, I was rather disappointed that my tour of Sicily was scheduled to end there, but in fact I found it charming. My favorite places, however, were on the east side of the island (Taormina and Siracusa).

Many years ago, a very attractive man told me he would like to chain me at the foot of the bed so he could use me as a urinal during the night. That killed all my romantic fantasies. I politely told him that I didn't think we were a good fit for one another. The older I get, the less sleep I get, because I need to use a urinal at night. I go to bed most nights at 9, and would like to sleep 8 hours, but I rarely manage to get more than 6, because once I get up to go, I have difficulty falling asleep again. To my surprise, one night last week I slept for ten hours straight, but then I felt lethargic for most of the day.

I always thought it was a class signal: upper class men crossed their legs, while working class men crossed their ankles.

I feel bad for the dogs, trying to find somewhere to go, because they usually work on scratch and smell. My dogs were always confused when it snowed in the city back east, and taking them out to do their business on a snowy night was always frustrating.

My best friend was a newspaper delivery boy, too. He was introduced to gay sex by the teenage son of one of the customers from whom he had to collect his fees, one day when the guy's parents were not at home when he came to collect. They continued to get together for several years afterwards. My friend brought me together once with the guy, who was in his twenties by then; it was more than sixty years ago, but I still remember the guy as having the largest cock I have ever tried to suck, and I have no idea how my friend managed to do it.

Dick's Sporting Goods

Damn! I forget I left that in the back when I got home from the store.

One of the women in a Bridge group I belonged to lived alone and had a a cell phone and a life alert button, but she took them off one night to take a bath, had a mini-stroke and couldn't get out of the tub. The next day a neighbor noticed that she hadn't taken in the morning paper, so he went over and found her in the tub, alive but very wrinkled. Another friend came home from a hospital stay, but the social worker at the hospital couldn't reach him on the phone the next day. She called the number of a neighbor whose number John had given her as a contact person. He went over to the house and found John sitting on a chair in front of his open refrigerator door: he had apparently been looking in the refrigerator for something to make for dinner the night before, had a heart attack and died sitting there. You can't always be prepared.

OMG. How old is this photo of Sir Andrew Murray?

Nothing about the language in the ad sounds Russian. "GingerBeard" is the kind of nickname I would expect from a Scot. If he has a fulltime day job in NY, he is unlikely to be Russian, unless he simply has Russian ancestry.

I have never encountered that. At the few nail salons I used to use, I was given the first employee who was available, regardless of gender. For several years I have had pedicures at a podiatrist's office, because MediCare pays for them, and person who usually works on me is a young (probably gay) male.

My father never wore a wedding ring. My mother decided to have a thin platinum wedding ring; I don't know her reason, but I suspect it was because they got married secretly at a time when her employer refused to employ married women, so she could pretend it wasn't a wedding ring. When I got married ten years ago, I still had my grandfather's wedding ring, which I had inherited when he died in 1959, but it still looked new, so I decided to re-purpose it as my own. It is 14 carat, but it was made with gold from a gold mine that my grandfather owned shares in during the 19th century, so it had sentimental value for me. I have never had any skin reaction to it.

I started rubbing my cock against the mattress sometime between the ages of five and ten, because it gave me a pleasantly warm feeling in my tummy. Around ten, my cock started to get hard when I saw pictures of certain males, so I began using my hand (literally "jerking off"), but my climaxes didn't actually ejaculate fluid for the first time until I was twelve, and I was disturbed at that. However, I didn't have any close friends with whom I could converse about it, so I just kept on doing it in private until I read something about the practice somewhere, and realized that it was normal male behavior. But I also learned that it was supposed to be stimulated by thoughts about girls, but mine was initiated by thoughts about young men. During my teens, I sometimes found opportunities to do it several times per day, usually while looking at photos in the little "physique" magazines that I could buy in the stores around Times Square, or while fantasizing about some of the guys in my high school gym class. Then, at seventeen, I found men with whom I could do a lot more than just masturbate, so jerking off became something I did only when there wasn't something more exciting available.

I misread the review area.

No, but only one star from eight reviews is not encouraging.

Some providers announce they are going somewhere just to see if they get any bites for future meetings there; if not, or not enough, they don't go.

One of the first mags I ever bought was a small fanzine with black and white photos of an exciting new singer named Elvis Presley. I was just learning how to jerk off, and kept it hidden under my mattress.

I knew the guy standing on the left (yes, he was gay).

Strangely enough, I had never seen these early photos of Teddy. Now I know why he easily attracted followers.

The only time I can remember was an appointment at a provider's apartment. He seemed rather tired when I arrived, and he suggested that we start with me giving him a blow job. I was doing my best to get him aroused, when I heard a light snore and looked up to see his eyes closed and his mouth open. So I stopped, quietly got dressed, then shook him awake, and told him I was leaving. He just gave me a sheepish look, but didn't object, as I walked out the door.

My mailbox is filled every day with requests for donations from organizations to which I have never given any money, but they have similar purposes to organizations to which I have given money, and they continue to solicit donations even though I never respond to them. Many of them send packets of greeting cards or other kinds of "gifts;" I occasionally keep the gifts and don't respond, but they will continue to send more gifts, all of which goes into my trash or recycling bins. I also get phone calls from many of these organizations, which I send straight to voicemail and delete. Whether it's animal support groups, education support, natural resources conservation groups, arts organizations, etc., they obviously get my information from organizations I do donate to. If they ask to put your name on a program, I would request that they just use "Anonymous."

Interesting that the skinny boy on the cover would be considered an example of "top physiques."

The title probably should be "Submarine Crew Showering in the Rain," but "showing" works, too.

There is definitely a difference between the guys I used to hire and the guys I dated or partnered. For hot and dirty sex, I liked big, hairy tops, but for an emotional relationship I wanted guys I could relate to on a personal level as friends, with whom I shared values and non-sexual interests. I rarely found men who fit both descriptions. I have been happily married for years to a guy who is older and shorter than I, slim (when we met) and almost devoid of body hair, and cute (when we met) but not a head-turner on the street. The sexual spark between us when we met was not based on physical attributes but personality. One doesn't flip through the photos on RM looking for emotional compatibility. When I am watching a sporting match on TV, the camera often switches to a prominent player's wife or girlfriend watching in the stands, and I am struck by how often she is the classic "trophy wife," looking like a plastic fashion model, and I wonder what their private relationship is like. I think back to my high school days and the hottest guy in the class: tall, handsome, built and a jock. He could have had almost any girlfriend he wanted, but instead he dated and married a classmate who was short, fat and homely, but with a lively personality. They had a happy marriage with several children, and his death from cancer in his 50s caused her to become an active fundraiser for a cancer society; she is now the mayor of their town. I don't see that kind of future for most of those trophy wives.

Probably examination for crabs in pubes and armpits.